Thread by @addie_1122

🏳️‍🌈TODAY’S PRIDE HERO🏳️‍🌈

Lynn Ann Conway
Born January 2, 1938

Lynn is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, and transgender activist
@lynnconway

#LGBTVoice

Lynn grew up in White Plains, New York. Conway was shy and experienced gender dysphoria as a child. She became fascinated and engaged by astronomy and did well in math and science in high school.

Lynn is notable for a number of pioneering achievements, including the Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI design, which incubated an emerging electronic design automation industry.

She worked at IBM in the 1960s and is credited with the invention of generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance

She entered MIT in 1955, earning high grades but ultimately leaving in despair after an attempted gender transition in 1957–58 failed due to the medical climate at the time.

After working as an electronics technician for several years, Conway resumed education at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, earning B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963

Although she had hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition

After learning of the pioneering research of Harry Benjamin in treating transsexuals & realizing that genital affirmation surgery was now possible, she sought his help and became his patient.

After suffering from severe depression from gender dysphoria, she contacted Benjamin, who agreed to providing counseling and prescribe hormones. Under Benjamin's care, she began her gender transition

While struggling with life in a male role, Conway had been married to a woman and had two children. Under the legal constraints then in place, after transitioning she was denied access to their children.

Nearing retirement, She began quietly coming out as a trans woman in 1999 to friends & colleagues about her past gender transition, using her personal website to tell the story in her own words. Her story was reported in 2000 in profiles in Scientific American & the L. A. Times

In 1987, she met her husband Charles Rogers, a professional engineer who shares her interest in the outdoors, whitewater canoeing & motocross racing. They soon started living together, and bought a house in Michigan. On August 13, 2002, they were married.

After going public with her story, she began work in transgender activism, intending to "illuminate and normalize the issues of gender identity and the processes of gender transition". She has worked to protect and expand the rights of transgender people.

She has provided direct and indirect assistance to numerous other transgender women going through transition and maintains a well-known website providing emotional and medical resources and advice. ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/…

She was a cast member in the first all-transgender performance of The Vagina Monologues in Los Angeles in 2004, and appeared in a LOGO-Channel documentary film about that event entitled Beautiful Daughters. aronsonfilms.com/beautiful-daug…

In 2009, Conway was named one of the "Stonewall 40 trans heroes" on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots by the International Court System, one of the oldest and largest predominantly gay organizations in the world, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Lynn Conway receives 2009 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award

In 2013, with support from many prominent thought-leaders in high-technology, Conway and her colleague Leandra Vicci of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill successfully lobbied the Board of Directors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers

for transgender inclusion in the IEEE's Code of Ethics. Time Magazine named Lynn as one of "21 Transgender People Who Influenced American Culture." In 2015 she was selected for inclusion in "The Trans100"

#LGBTVoices has been featuring Pride Heroes all month long. If you missed any of our previous posts, please check them out in the twitter moments below.

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